Although most judicial research is chronologically organized by the term of the Court or by chief justice, many users employ "natural courts" as their analytical frame of reference.

A natural court is a period during which no personnel change occurs. Scholars have subdivided them into "strong" and "weak" natural courts, but no convention exists as to the dates on which they begin and end. Options include 1) date of confirmation, 2) date of seating, 3) cases decided after seating, and 4) cases argued and decided after seating. A strong natural court is delineated by the addition of a new justice or the departure of an incumbent. A weak natural court, by comparison, is any group of sitting justices even if lengthy vacancies occurred.

The values below divide the Courts into strong natural courts, each of which begins when the Reports first specify that the new justice is present but not necessarily participating in the reported case. Similarly, a natural court ends on the date when the Reports state that an incumbent justice has died, retired, or resigned. The courts are numbered consecutively by chief justice as the code at the left-hand margin indicates.

Note, especially, that the Court was without a chief justice during the 1836 term. This was the period between Marshall's death and Taney's confirmation.

For more on delineating natural courts, see See Edward V. Heck, "Justice Brennan and the Heyday of Warren Court Liberalism," 20 Santa Clara Law Review 841 (1980) 842-843 and "Changing Voting Patterns in the Burger Court: The Impact of Personnel Change," 17 San Diego Law Review 1021 (1980) 1038; Harold J. Spaeth and Michael F. Altfeld, "Measuring Power on the Supreme Court: An Alternative to the Power Index," 26 Jurimetrics 48 (1985) 55.
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